Spark

Two Calvin juniors have won the Goldwater Scholarship, which is regarded as the highest national award for undergraduates in the sciences.

Junior Anna Michmerhuizen wants to spend her life doing research. “I’m not content unless I’m learning,” she said. “And, I know it sounds cliché, but I want to make the world a better place. The combination of those two things has led me to pursue research.”

Last summer, the biochemistry major researched complicated solutions alongside biochemistry professor Doug Vander Griend, and this summer, she’s heading to Mayo Clinic to research a way to diagnose a fungal disease.

Fellow Goldwater recipient Lauren Strohbehn spent last summer with chemistry professor Larry Louters researching the role that lipid rafts play in the movement of an important glucose transport protein around the cell. The Goldwater Scholarship “was an unexpected honor and makes me excited about my research this summer and upcoming graduate school,” Strohbehn said.